Rituals for the care of Nature. Memory and Rural Resistance
Espacio de Encuentros Rurales, La Surera
Spain
Laboratory in La Surera, Almedíjar (Alto Palancia) that revitalizes rural rituality in the face of the ecosocial crisis. We reclaim fire and earth rites (San Blas, Divina Pastora) as care technologies that strengthen the community weave and interspecies dialogue. The project promotes intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, hybridizing local memory with migrant worldviews to generate new rural narratives. Under an ecofeminist approach, we will co-create ceremonies that transform living heritage into strategic tools for biodiversity protection and territorial resilience.
This project proposes a laboratory of civic participation in La Surera, Almedíjar, in the Alto Palancia region (Castellón), to investigate and revitalize rural rituality as a response to the challenges of the Anthropocene. In the face of the Capitalocene crisis, the rural environment—marked by aging and depopulation—emerges as a territory of resistance. We claim living intangible heritage—rituals linked to elements of nature such as fire or earth in San Blas or in the Divina Pastora—as a social technology of care that strengthens the interspecies bond and the community weave.
Its central axes are intergenerationality and interculturality, creating new rural narratives through dialogue that hybridizes the local memory of the elders with the worldviews of the migrant population and new settlers, enhancing a ferment of knowledge. Also, the ecofeminist perspective, placing at the center the ethics of care and the appreciation of the interdependence between ecosystem and community. Finally, living heritage activating the co-creation of ceremonies that transform tradition into symbolic acts as effective tools for the protection of biodiversity.